What am I doing here, anyway? What possessed anyone to think I was up to this job, when all I ever do is muck things up? Kellen thought despairingly.
When he'd found the three Books of the Wild Magic in the Low Market, he'd had a home and a family and a bright future available for the asking. He'd thrown away all three for stubbornness and willful pride. He was probably never going to see Armethalieh again, and the longer he was away from it, the more he realized how much he missed the City.
No, not the City. He missed what the City could have been—a place of justice, and honor, and law. He missed the fact that he'd used to believe that it was. He missed the sound of the City bells on a winter morning, and spice-bread and hot black tea, the small good things that you couldn't get anywhere else. Suddenly he missed them very much.
Sentarshadeen was gorgeous, but—it was full of Elves, who weren't the most comfortable of neighbors. Merryvale—well, there probably wasn't much left of Merryvale now, even though Idalia hadn't been able to get any news of it. He longed for the company of simple, uncomplicated humans (and Centaurs) with a kind of craving.
And in a way, he longed for his old life, as well, and the days when his only responsibilities were to be the good son and student his father wanted.
And most of all, at that moment, Kellen realized that the more he learned about the Wild Magic, the more he realized that it really was truly a dangerous thing. Beneficial, yes, necessary, yes, but not a tame magic, one with the consequences all laid out in advance, where you could see them before you acted. The Wild Magic demanded belief, a faith that the world's needs were more important than your own comfort and safety, and far more important than your own peace of mind.
And that—well, that implied that it could be dangerous to him one day. Someday—and maybe that day was now—it might very well ask a Mageprice of him that would kill him, cripple him, or change him beyond recognition, and the Wild Magic wouldn't care, because it couldn't care, any more than a general could care about whether or not one of the individual soldiers in his army got hurt in war. The general knew that the war itself was worth fighting, that was all. The Wild Magic would bargain whatever it needed to, for the greater good of all—and some would fall in seeing that greater good accomplished. Wonderful if you were one of the survivors, but pretty hard on the ones who weren't.
Piece by piece, Kellen removed his Elven armor and set it aside, as carefully as if he were certain he would be coming back for it. And as he did, a second set of thoughts occurred to him, no more comforting than the first. In neutralizing this spell—if he had the strength, the luck, the will—he would be placing himself—not Sentarshadeen, not Idalia, but him, Kellen Tavadon—in direct opposition to the Prince of Shadow Mountain. The Demons, the Endarkened, the creatures that haunted his innermost fears, the monsters that frightened even Jermayan and Queen Ashaniel, that terrified Vestakia, would be hunting him.
He'd stood up to the Arch-Mage of Armethalieh—his own father— and the consequences of that had been grim enough to make him wary of the penalties of rash defiance. The full cost of that act was one Kellen was only barely coming to realize, one that he was going to face for the rest of his life. What would be the price of making a personal enemy of the Prince of the Demon Legions of Hell and his allies?
Kellen stood shivering in his underpadding and leather socks. He picked up the keystone again. The crystal was warm in his hands, the only warmth in all the world. It seemed to pulse with sleeping life.
He hesitated, glancing up at the fog of green lightning around the obelisk.
He was afraid. He had to acknowledge that. In fact, he was terrified. Not because he didn't know what would happen, but because he was fairly sure he did. No matter what was to come, it was going to be bad. The only question was, how bad?
For a moment Kellen felt nothing but panic and despair that held him frozen in place where he stood. He felt the hatred here, in a way that was hard to articulate. The things that had created this place, the emotion they had for everything that was not them was so malevolent that the word hatred didn't begin to describe it. Even if he succeeded here—and there was no guarantee of that—nothing would be over. All the four of them would have done was end the drought in the Elven lands and alert Shadow Mountain to the fact that the Elves knew the Endarkened were moving against them and preparing to strike at the World Above once more. Shadow Mountain would still be as powerful. The Elves would still be as weak. Armethalieh would still be as blind and arrogant, thinking of nothing but itself.
Nothing much would change for anyone, except for Kellen. He would have made powerful enemies, enemies that would not stop until they had taken their revenge for what he'd done here today. Was even Sentarshadeen strong enough to protect him? Would they, if they could?
Would he want them to? Could he live with being the reason why Shadow Mountain brought their agents, their armies, against the Elves of Sentarshadeen?
He looked down at the keystone. He held his future in his hands. He could drop it and run. It would break. If not here, then he could do it once he got to the other side of the cairn, where the others wouldn't see. He could throw it off the side of the cairn. Then he wouldn't have to make this choice. He wouldn't have all the Demons of Shadow Mountain after him personally. He could sneak down the far side, get back to Armethalieh somehow. Lycaelon would forgive him—especially if he renounced the Wild Magic and told him everything he knew about the trouble among the Elves and in the border lands.
Oh, he could see it so clearly: he could become his father's favored son again; there'd be some tale put about of his having been sent out as a special agent, and he'd be safe, safe, safe . .
